But those gentlemen who so hastily infer from this controversy
that anonymousness is the root of all misrepresentation should look at the very similar.correspondene,e between Mr. Bright and Lord Hartington. That nobleman made a careless and, in other respects, harmless blunder in attributing a senseless speech. of Mr. Seward's, that no man in the North was poorer for its huge war, to either Mr. Bright, who had never endorsed, or to Mr. Cobden, who had carefully refuted, the doctrine it contained. On being set right, he hunted in Mr. Bright's speech till he found a sentence that was about as like Mr. Seward's as one of his own admissions, and no more so, and put that forward as his justifi- cation. Mr. Bright remonstrates, and Lord Hartington replies that while he (Lord Hartington) attributed the apparent prosperity of the North to the enormous temporary war expenditure, and predicted -collapse, Mr. Bright predicted no collapse. Surely not, but neither did Mr. Bright speak of the apparent prosperity as real. He merely called attention to it as showing that the Federal cause was not yet giving ground. It is a very silly business of Lord Hartington's. He would have done much more wisely to admit his blunder quietly, and no one would have thought any more about it. As it is, every one sees the blunder as plainly as ever, but every one also sees a childish deficiency in candour and magnanimity as well. Clearly personal authentication is no specific for the faults inherent in public or in literary men.
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